About Planimals

Planimals are AI-generated animal illustrations rendered in a Risograph-inspired aesthetic. Each one is created from a semantic plan name—a simple hyphenated phrase like "composed-squishing-cat" or "bold-dancing-fox"—that gets transformed into a unique visual mascot.

Origin

Claude Code generates whimsical plan names when you enter plan mode. Names like "quick-hopping-bunny" or "sleepy-round-penguin" are memorable identifiers, but they felt like they deserved more than text. Planimals gives each plan name a face—a small visual artifact to accompany your work.

How It Works

The system parses your plan name to extract an animal and its adjectives. These are combined with style directives for Risograph printing—teal and coral inks, halftone dots, paper grain, slight color misregistration—and sent to Google's Gemini image model. The result is a unique illustration generated in seconds.

Why Risograph?

Risograph printing emerged from Japanese office duplicators in the 1980s. The technology layers single-color ink passes to create images with characteristic artifacts: visible halftone grain, slight color misalignment, ink that absorbs unevenly into paper. What would be flaws in commercial printing became the defining aesthetic of indie publishing and art prints. Planimals embrace this lo-fi sensibility—warm, tactile, intentionally imperfect.

Technology

• Next.js with Tailwind CSS and shadcn/ui
• Google Gemini for image generation
• Vercel Workflows for async processing
• Cloudflare R2 and KV for storage
• Built with Claude Code

Creator

Built by Alephic—an AI consulting firm that builds custom systems for marketing organizations. We like building small experiments like this to stay close to the tools and explore new capabilities as they emerge.